

Clientless VPN is established through a web browser. Premium licenses allow for both An圜onnect client based and clientless SSL VPN. Premium licenses are more complicated than Essentials. An圜onnect Essentials licenses debuted with ASA release v8.2. For example, on the 5510 make sure the license is L-ASA-AC-E-5510=. These are platform specific SKUs so make sure the one you’re buying matches the device it is going on. These licenses are relatively inexpensive, currently priced around a hundred dollars with the price varying per platform. For example, a 5510 would immediately allow for up to 250 SSL VPN connections from the An圜onnect client. Installing an Essentials license allows for up to the maximum number of VPN sessions on the platform to be concurrently used for SSL. Essentials provide Any Connect client based connections from personal computers including Windows and Mac systems. SSL licenses break into two general types: Essentials and Premium. SSL VPN debuted on the ASA when it was first released but has evolved more than any other licensed based feature on the ASA. By default the 5505 ships with a 10 user license but can be upgraded to 50 or unlimited users. A user is considered an internal device which communicates with the external VLAN. The 5505 is the only ASA which has a restriction on the number of “users” behind a firewall. Note: the ASA 5585X series does have Security Plus licenses which enables the 10GB SFP+ slots. They come with the Base license and need nothing more to get the most performance out of the unit.

The Cisco ASA 5520 and up do not have Security Plus licensing.

Cisco ASA firewall licensing used to be pretty simple, but as features were rolled out as licenses, the scheme became quite complex.
